In his garage-turned-studio outside his home in Tower Grove East, Benjamin Cornwell picks up a chip of glass, attaches it to a punty, lights his torch to a blazing 1,700 degrees and waits for the glass to begin to liquify. With some twists, some shaping and a whole lot of patience, Cornwell slowly creates one of the masterpieces for which he is increasingly well known: a mesmerizing, psychedelic marble.
Cornwell, owner of BC Glass Worx, started on his journey of marble-making 17 years ago at the age of 24 after being introduced to the art form by Marble Mark Cappel, a third-generation sculptor and glass blower who was one of the first people to bring contemporary marbles to the glass scene. His passion then led him to seek tutelage from several other accomplished artists in the glasswork medium, including Mike Faircloth, Cowboy, Mike Fro, John Kobuki, Seth Bickis and John Halloway.
Now 41, Cornwell has developed a signature style of marble he’s named, appropriately, the “Cornwell,” whose appearance is a mixture of vortex, implosion and honeycomb marble variants. Another glassblowing style Cornwell favors is one he calls “color balance,” which incorporates two stacked halves separated by a band of contrasting color. It’s Cornwell's use of metals like gold and silver that sets his work apart in the glassblowing community.
But before honing his passion for constructing marbles into the razor-sharp skill it is today, Cornwell got his start in the business side of the glass industry by selling pipeware, ultimately creating and selling some intricate pieces before finally adding marbles and some jewelry to his repertoire.
“I went into pipes in an effort to become more stable than marble-making as far as income goes,” Cornwell explains. “I started making cheap pipes from $10 to $20. It's a good place value — several pipemakers here in St. Louis make their paycheck off of that $20 product.”
When it comes to his pipeware, Cornwell tends to be flexible in his approach. He says he’ll frequently start creating one piece only for it to morph into another during the creative process.
“It is generally a sizing issue,” he says. “I'll go into it wanting to make chillums, straight pipes, and then it'll get large so I'll turn it into a hammer. I mostly make dry pipes, but I have also made a few water pipes.”
Cornwell’s glassware, both cannabis-related and otherwise, has since become well sought after in collector circles, with pockets of fans as far-flung as Japan, Tasmania, the UK and Australia. In addition to selling his work more locally at Penny Lane Gifts in Springfield, Illinois, and iKaleidoscope in Springfield, Missouri, his work has been showcased in various competitions including Pueblo, Colorado’s SoCo Fun in the Flame event and the Sonoran Flame Off in Tucson, Arizona. At press time, Cornwell is busy attending the Humboldt Marble Weekend in Eureka, California, and gearing up for his own Show-Me Glass Show in St. Louis at .ZACK’s Urban Ballroom (3224 Locust Street) on Saturday, March 9.
Glasswork is a craft that can be daunting at times. Cornwell generally works temperatures between 1,700 and 1,900 degrees, occasionally jumping to the 2,000 to 2,400 range. But the way he describes his process makes it seem as though he isn’t even breaking a sweat.
“Glass with [heat] moves under the order of convection,” he explains. “So as it melts, you can kind of roll it up on itself in a way, and it'll draw the color up into it.”
After melting and manipulating the glass, the pieces move to an annealing oven, which cools the molten material for six hours — at minimum.
“Once you start getting into size, you really start complicating the fill times, because you have to have a soak time to ensure that the heat is even, and then a cool time,” Cornwell says. “And then you have to have a ramp time — that brings it down according to the expansion of glass so it has efficiency of expansion.”
It can sound complicated when he describes it, but it really comes down to one core principle: “Glass is emotional, and if you don't treat it properly, it won't treat you properly,” Cornwell explains.
Given that, back in 2015, Cornwell created a grading system for himself to critique his own work, making sure to pick only what he thought was the very best to sell.
“When I have a body of work, I set it all out and I grade it,” he says. “So I go through and I find out what I consider to be A work — basic A, B, C, D. You want to see where you are in real time, and once you accomplish the body of work and you set the grading, you can establish where you want to be. I'm pretty happy with it more often than not.”
Asked what his goals are now that he’s gained a considerable foothold in the world of glasswork, Cornwell says he wants to continue acquiring more knowledge in the glass industry wherever he can, with the hopes of one day opening a shop locally.
“Classes at Corning Museum of Glass in New York, classes at a Salem glass school or Pilchuck would be amazing,” he says. “A shop with 10- to 12-foot ceilings; a community to share all that with. A dream for me is a shop that shares art education, entertainment, and uses cuisine in a fashion that drives the vehicle."
But in the meantime, he’s just enjoying the ride.
“It’s about the journey, not the destination,” Cornwell says.
To view more of Cornwell’s work, visit his Instagram.
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